Some Thoughts about Unions

What’s going on in Wisconsin

As I watch the nightly news from sources I have learned to trust, I am appalled by what the governor of Wisconsin is doing to break the public employee unions and it looks like it might spread to other states. The bright spot in all this is the reaction of the majority of the people in Wisconsin who are basically saying “you have gone too far.” When you look closely the issue in Wisconsin is not money, but a person’s right to collective bargaining. Collective bargaining under the leadership of unions has taken a horrible beating in recent years as they have been called the bogeymen of our economy. In my opinion, this is untrue. In fact unions never got anything for their members without compromise and the consensus of company management. That’s why the process is called collective bargaining. 

A Short History Lesson

For the most part, unions came about in the U.S. during the 1920s and 30s for one simple reason; industrial workers were treated like slaves by their employers. They were required to work 15 hour days, 6 days a week for a poverty wage. There were no benefits; no sick days, no insurance of any kind, no retirement and no employment safe guards of any kind. Unions where formed to give some kind of protection to workers at the peril of the organizers and members. The history of that time is full of confrontations in the street. Policemen and soldiers were used to force people back to work and away from collective bargaining. General Motor’s Flint Michigan plants were the scene of many walk outs and considerable blood shed in 1937. A good source on all of this is A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

The novel by John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath,is an incredible documentation of the plight of the rural poor in America during the 1920-1930. The events and conditions portrayed in the book should be considered carefully by all of us today. If the right wing politics and the wealthiest Americans get their way we will see these things again on a larger scale and it won’t be only migrant farm workers being impacted.

As a teacher in a technical college years ago, I became directly involved in collective bargaining for the faculty of that institution. What we went through to get fairness in salaries could fill a book. The greatest motivation of the school board was to keep their personal property taxes as low as possible. Most of the board members were large ranch and farm owners. They seemed to have little regard for the quality of education provided our students or the well being of their employees, the teachers. Money was the most important issue, money in their pockets. By the way, they were the wealthiest men in the county. Without the combined strength of all the teachers and support from the Teachers Association we would have been unable to get salary equity with other teachers in the state, which even at best was one of the lowest in the U.S.

What I have experienced first hand

After college I went to work for Ford Motor Company in the Detroit area. There I had the opportunity to experience unions and their affect up close and personal. In fact my last job in Dearborn required the direct supervision of 36 United Auto Worker members. They were auto technicians and support personnel, all with good benefits and wages. Were they over-paid? Maybe. Maybe a better question would be, would they have been underpaid if they had not been union employees?  One thing I do know is that my salary and benefits as a non-union employee were directly related to what the union negotiated every three years. Years later I was able to experience the affects of not being under the Union Umbrella when the car companies found a loophole in providing benefits for white collar workers. I became what was called a "contract employee." People could be legally hired as non-employee employees and in this way paid a lower salary with virtually no benefits. If fact, my retirement from Ford came about because Ford eliminated all company employees in the organization I worked for and replaced them with contract people. It’s good I was retirement age.  

It takes incredible deceit to get people to go against their own best interests.

As I sit in front of the TV and computer and watch the reports of the political support given to politicians like Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and House Speaker Boeher etc. by so many middle class Americans, I am dumfounded and stunned that so many working class people support these guys. When Boener say’s “so be it,” it seems the people he is targeting for job loss cheer! Maybe this blind action comes from a lack of education about our own history. Even prominent politicians don’t seem to know our real history; in fact they get away with misrepresenting it continually.

What Unions have done for all of us.

All of us who have worked for wages or a salary have received benefits from what unions have helped their members to achieve:  40 hour work weeks, holiday pay, minimum wage, retirement packages, health and medical benefits, workplace safety, etc. The union agreements have provided the competition that made it necessary for non-union companies to also provide these benefits.

We Americans need to wake up and realize that the purpose of business is to make a profit--benevolence is not in their mission statement. The banking crisis yells this at us, yet we seem to ignore the bankers' shenanigans and we discard all the safeguards that were put in place at one time to prevent their greed from destroying us. If average citizens don’t have leverage equal to the power of big business and banking they will always lose. That is why we have government. United we stand, divided we fall!

Flabbergasted

I am flabbergasted by the political craziness going on in our country and the state of Utah right now. Much of it seems to be fueled by a sorrowful lack of knowledge of our history and where our search for a more perfect union has led us. The states’ rights issues being raised in Utah at this time are an incredible example of this. There are proposals before the Utah legislature right now that deny an understanding of why our country exists and why our state came into being. Let us not forget that our country was forged in the furnace of our intentions as a nation as stated in the preamble to the constitution. It is indeed alarming when presidential candidates, state and national legislators and other public officials make blatant errors when serving up history to support their case or even worse, totally ignore what we have learned as a country. I’m sure new citizens taking the citizenship test are much better informed and held to a higher standard of knowledge concerning our country than many of our so called political leaders, pundits and presidential hopefuls. Maybe those leaders should be required to pass a test before they can qualify for office. Their lack of knowledge is dangerous. One of the requirements for a successful democracy is a well-informed public. In this case ignorance is a very dangerous thing. If our politicians won’t learn basic civics, we citizens had better teach it to them.

Back to the states’ rights movement in Utah: the Utah legislature seems fixated on state sovereignty. There are numerous legislative proposals presently before the Utah State Legislature designed to increase this. One of the most significant is the move to force the “return” of all Federal Land in Utah to the State. There is even a proposal to charge the Federal Government for use of the land. In February 2012 HB511 rapidly passed  through the House Natural Resources Committee by an 8 to 1 vote. This bill proposes to let cities and counties exercise eminent domain and take over federal land, despite strong warnings from legislative attorneys that it is almost certainly unconstitutional.  It is important to note that a brief study of Utah history before statehood indicates Utah never originally owned any land. Utah did not officially exist until it gained statehood in 1896; before that, it was a territory under the control of the federal government and before 1846, the tract of land Utah was part of belonged to the country of Mexico.

We just observed the hundred and fiftieth year since the beginning of the Civil War. Have we totally forgotten what that war was all about and that 600,000 American troops gave their lives for that cause, not to mention the thousands wounded and maimed? Guess what the battle was originally over? Yep, it was states’ rights. No, it was not originally about slavery, but about what held the Union together. During his brief run for the presidency, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, proclaimed that maybe Texas should secede from the Union. Another governor of Texas said about the same thing in the run-up to Fort Sumter at the beginning of the Civil War and actually tried to do it!  Is Utah ignorantly headed in this direction? I hope not. My great grandfather fought in that horrible war for three long years. His company of Pennsylvania infantry lost 700 of 900 original soldiers.

Another question: how long would Utah’s economy run and its security last if it isolated itself from the Union? It is no secret that Utah’s economy is not self-supporting. The state receives more in federal dollars than its citizens pay in federal taxes.  There are hundreds of reasons why secession would be a disaster. In fact, it would take a book to document them all. For you survivalists out there: get real!  “Surviving” is not fun. Remember the Movie Red Dawn?

I really think all of us living in Utah are Americans first and Utahans second, simply because I ask myself which came first, the United States of America or the State of Utah? Which entity had the first Constitution? What did the revered forefathers work so hard to do?  Most of the Utah legislators pushing states’ rights have strong conservative ideology and want to return to the “way we were.” Well, we never were “The Sovereign State of Utah” and the State of Utah never held title to the land in Utah. The fact is, those living in Utah begged to become a state for over forty years. Why? So we could have the benefits and security of Statehood as written in the preamble to the US Constitution:

We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of America.

Just a reminder:  this was written long before there was even any idea of a place called Utah. The people living in the Utah Territory at the time of statehood (1896) had to agree to uphold the constitution of the United State and uphold its laws before Utah would be granted statehood. It took over forty years before it was finally granted and there was cheering in the streets when it finally happened.  The funny thing is that the Constitution of Utah, which you would think our legislators would reference first, holds the key to dispelling all this nonsense. It is very easy to reference this document at utah.gov. The pertinent sections are:

Article I, Section 3.

The State of Utah is an inseparable part of the Federal Union and the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land.

Article 3, Section 2.

The people inhabiting this State do affirm and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the un-appropriated public lands lying within the boundaries hereof, and to all lands lying within said limits owned or held by Indian or Indian tribes, and that until the title thereto shall have been extinguished by the United States, the same shall be and remain subject to the disposition of the United States. (boldface mine).

Many of my neighbors are upset because the Federal Government controls so much of the forest land in central and southern Utah. Some of them even believe this land was forcibly taken.  As we have seen above, the State Constitution should dispel that idea.  I think it is also important for us to know that the citizens of Manti and Ephraim asked for federal control of the land. I quote an article printed June 18, 1953 in the Salt Lake Tribune commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Manti National Forest:

Ten to 20 years prior to the turn of the century, Manti and Ephraim suffered from devastating floods that reared off of the steep Wasatch Plateau.

Finally, about 1900, L.R. Anderson, a prominent resident of Manti, ran for mayor on a “no more floods” platform. He was elected and under his leadership the people…petitioned President Theodore Roosevelt to create a national forest reserve… The President did so by executive order dated May 29, 1903.

Livestock grazing and other use in Manti Canyon was placed under proper management 50 years ago and as the vegetation was restored … no more serious floods have occurred.

….. We doubt that anybody living on the verdant strip of green that depends on the towering Wasatch for its water properly channeled and controlled by nature’s process would want to turn back the clock.

(For more information on the facts concerning this topic please refer to Chapter Nine, The Other 49ers, A Topical History of Sanpete County Utah 1849 to 1983. Sanpete County Commission 1982).

It seems some folks would like to do just that, turn back the clock.  I doubt if they really understood why and how we got where we are as a nation and state. If they did, maybe good sense would prevail.

All of us should more carefully consider what we are told and tend to believe if we are to avoid repeating the disastrous events of our American History and that of the larger world. We are still, and will always be, defining our country. Hopefully, we will do it with an eye to what is best for the entire country. We will not survive under the tyranny of narrow-mindedness, bigotry, ignorance, hidden agendas and self-aggrandizement. Forging a great nation is not easy. Some great thinker said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the rest.”  May we be diligent, patient and well informed as we continue to refine and grow ourselves and our country for our children and fellow citizens!  We need to be diligent in our search for the truth about our country and our national and state purpose. Every bit of knowledge we can acquire in any area will help lead us closer to the truth, to what is right. Being closer to the truth can never be as harmful as ignorance.

(To read more about the difficult quest for Utah Statehood read Chapter Eight ; Utah The Right Place, The Official Centennial History by Thomas G. Alexander.)